Heres how I look at teleportation.
Im in location A. I step into a machine that scans my body, gathers all the information (position of cells, characteristics, etc etc) while destroying the cells at the same time. In order to have an exact copy, the cell must be the same as it was when it was scanned. Then all that information is sent over to the transporter at location B. My body is then reassembled as it was when I was scanned at location A. Therefore, I have been teleported.
To me the soal is nothing more then our minds constant interaction with our environment. Yes, our soul is what makes us who we are, but its the interactions that we have that feed that information to our subconcious, which then relays the processed information to our conscious.
Cloning is completely different. Lets look at the same scenario i used to explain teleportation. For this method to be concidered cloning, would the person at Location A still remain after the person at location B arrived? The fact that I was destroyed while be scanned at location A, and then reassembled at location B clearly shows the act of teleportation, not cloning.
I actually just answered of mine by explaining transporting lol I watch alot of stargate/atlantis and i've always had an understanding of how transporters could work, but beaming technology always left me scratching my head. Now, i'm just thinking outloud over here. I would suspect that the best medium to scan/analyze an objects cells is a beam. Only the beam would shift quickly between scan/destroy, therefore obtaining the information and then destroying it immediatly. Now, in a transporter, this would be relatively simple since the transporter would most likely be some sort of platofmr or something that would have the equipment to do this. With beaming it gets trickier since you dont actually have the transporter platform. However, im guessing now that a higher powered/more directed beam could pinpoint an object (lets say from orbit) and carry out the same function - only difference is that there would be a delay in time from the light reaching the object on the planets surface, to the 'transporter information receiver' on a ship or w/e in orbit.
hmm... comments/ideas/suggestions?
